MDEQ Awards Grants for Curbside Recycling Carts

In April 2014, Governor Snyder set the ambitious goal of doubling the state’s recycling rate. In support of this initiative, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality awarded $450,000 in grants in 2016 to bring over 31,500 curbside recycling carts to Michigan communities.

Community

Grant Offer

Lathrop Village

$23.447

Ferndale

$28,866

Berkley

$44,900

Pleasant Ridge

$16,640

Beverly Hills

$52,379

Oak Park

$69,621

Birmingham

$44,638

Hazel Park

$92,435

Clawson

$77,074

TOTAL

$450,000

Why carts?

Switching from smaller bins to larger carts has been found to increase recycling volumes and participation rates. Offering grant funding to assist local municipalities with improving recycling collection infrastructure is an important part of implementing the Governor’s Recycling Initiative.

Forming partnerships

These grants are being offered in collaboration with The Recycling Partnership, a national nonprofit dedicated to helping communities improve recycling programs. As a result of this partnership, grantees will receive technical assistance and educational resources from The Recycling Partnership that will be crucial to the success of the projects.

These grants represent a partnership between the MDEQ and local municipalities. The available $450,000 of DEQ grant funding will be used to leverage over $971,000 in grant match funding to provide carts to over 31,500 households. In addition, this MDEQ funding helped to catalyze a larger, $12.8 million dollar project through the Southeastern Oakland County Resource Recovery Authority (SOCRRA) and its member communities.

With the help of local waste-hauling businesses, this larger SOCRRA project will provide more than 109,000 total Michigan households with curbside recycling carts and will increase projected total recycling volumes more than 14.7 million pounds each year. In conjunction with this, state-of-the-art upgrades will be made to the community-owned recycling processing facility in order to transition from dual-stream to single-stream processing.

The MDEQ is dedicated to respect for Michigan’s citizens, stewardship of the environment, and support for a sustainable economy.